Arriving in Australia, Herzog pays tribute to Bondi terror victims: ‘We shall overcome’
During trip, president to also meet Jewish leaders, Australian officials; thousands of anti-Israel protesters rally in Sydney against alleged Gaza ‘genocide,’ demand his arrest
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President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog landed in Australia on Monday to kick off an official visit at the invitation of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, following the December terror shooting at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in which 15 people were massacred by a father and son in an Islamic terrorist attack.
Herzog’s first stop was to lay a wreath at the site of the mass shooting, paying tribute to its victims as he stood in the rain.
“The bonds between good people of all faiths and all nations will continue to hold strong in the face of terror, violence and hatred,” he said. “We shall overcome this evil together.”
“These vile terrorists specifically and deliberately targeted our dear sisters and brothers, Australian Jews,” the president added in his remarks at the site. “Yet, this was also an attack on all Australians. They attacked the values that our democracies treasure. This is how terror operates all around the world, and, sadly, Israel has faced this deadly threat for many decades.”
Herzog said that “antisemitism here in Australia is not a Jewish problem — it is an Australian problem and a global problem. Over the generations, one thing has become clear: hatred that starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews. This is why the current rise in antisemitism around the world is a global emergency — and we must all act to fight against it.”
The visiting president said that he welcomed the “positive steps already taken by the Australian government to tackle antisemitism since the Bondi attack. Leaders across all sectors of society must speak out clearly and consistently against antisemitism, because silence in the face of hatred is complicity.”
The president and his wife then met with family members of the Bondi terror attack victims, telling them that Israel stands with them.
“The world’s only Jewish state, the State of Israel and the nation of Israel, stood together with the Australian people,” Herzog said. “We stood with Australian Jews, for we are one big family, and when one Jew is hurt, all Jews feel their pain.”
The president is also slated to hold official meetings with senior Australian officials, including Albanese, Governor-General Sam Mostyn, and others “from across the political spectrum.”
Thousands gathered across Australia on Monday afternoon and evening to protest his arrival, including in a square in Sydney’s central business district, where activists listened to speeches and shouted pro-Palestine slogans.
“The Bondi massacre was terrible but from our Australian leadership there’s been no acknowledgment of the Palestinian people and the Gazans,” said Jackson Elliott, a 30-year-old protestor from Sydney. “Herzog has dodged all the questions about the occupation and says this visit is about Australia and Israeli relations but he is complicit.”
There was a heavy police presence with a helicopter circling overhead and officers patrolling on horseback. About 3,000 police personnel will be deployed across Sydney during Herzog’s visit to the city.
Authorities in Sydney declared Herzog’s visit a major event and have been authorized to use rarely invoked powers during the visit, including the ability to separate and move crowds, restrict their entry to certain areas, direct people to leave and search vehicles.
The Palestine Action Group organizing the protest failed in a legal challenge in a Sydney court on Monday against restrictions placed on the expected demonstration.
The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry found last year that Herzog was liable for prosecution for inciting genocide after he said all Palestinians — “an entire nation” — were responsible for the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023.
Israel has “categorically” rejected the inquiry’s report, describing it as “distorted and false” and calling for the body’s abolition.
Israel denies accusations of war crimes, saying its military actions in Gaza, sparked by the October 7 massacre, are targeted at terror groups, which it accuses of using the civilian population as human shields.
Australia’s federal police have ruled out an arrest of the president, with senior officials telling lawmakers in parliament that Herzog had “full immunity” covering civil and criminal matters, including genocide.
Albanese said people had a right to protest, but he urged them to be respectful of the families of those killed in the December 14 armed assault on crowds at a celebration of Hanukkah.
‘Lives that were stolen’
“I, along with President Herzog, will meet with families of those victims, those innocent lives that were stolen,” Albanese told reporters over the weekend.
“They were husbands, fathers, daughters, sisters, friends, loved ones,” he added.
“In Australia, I think people want innocent lives to be protected, whether it be Israeli or Palestinian, but they want something else as well — they don’t want conflict brought here.”
Protest organizers had rejected a police request to move the demonstration from outside the city center’s Town Hall to a nearby park because of concerns about the limited size of the venue, said New South Wales acting assistant commissioner Paul Dunstan.
But the activists nevertheless stressed to police that they wanted a “peaceful and safe protest,” he told a news conference.
Few other details have been released about Herzog’s schedule, as is customary, because of security concerns.
Antisemitism
Critics have accused Albanese’s center-left Labor Party government of moving too slowly to protect Jewish Australians despite a string of antisemitic incidents since the Hamas onslaught on Israel in 2023.
One of the Bondi Beach shooters, Sajid Akram, 50, was shot and killed by police during the attack.
An Indian national, he entered Australia on a visa in 1998.
His 24-year-old son, Naveed, an Australian-born citizen who remains in prison, has been charged with terrorism and 15 murders.
Among the victims were an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, a couple who confronted one of the gunmen, and a 10-year-old girl, Matilda, who was described at her funeral as a “ray of sunshine.”
Many Jewish Australians have welcomed Herzog’s trip.
“His visit will lift the spirits of a pained community,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the community’s peak body.
But a minority in the Jewish community disagreed, with the fringe anti-Zionist Jewish Council of Australia saying he is not welcome because of his alleged role in the “ongoing destruction of Gaza.”
The Times of Israel Community.